Insider buying declined last week, with insiders purchasing $46.23 million of stock compared to $88.58 million in the week prior. Selling, on the other hand, increased, with insiders selling $573.13 million of stock last week compared to $482.22 million in the week prior.

Sell/Buy Ratio: The insider Sell/Buy ratio is calculated by dividing the total insider sales in a given week by total insider purchases that week. The adjusted ratio for last week went up to 12.39. In other words, insiders sold more than 12 times as much stock as they purchased. The Sell/Buy ratio this week compares unfavorably with the prior week, when the ratio stood at 5.44.

Insider Sector Heat Map April 19, 2019

(Source: InsideArbitrage.com database)

Note: As mentioned in the first post in this series, certain industries have their preferred metrics, such as same-store sales for retailers, funds from operations (FFO) for REITs and revenue per available room (RevPAR) for hotels, that provide a better basis for comparison than simple valuation metrics. However, metrics like Price/Earnings, Price/Sales and Enterprise Value/EBITDA included below should provide a good starting point for analyzing the majority of stocks.

Notable Insider Buys

Executive Chairman Richard D. Kinder acquired 502,639 shares of this oil & gas pipelines company, paying $19.75 per share for a total amount of $9.93 million. Mr. Kinder increased his stake by 0.21% to 239,397,332 shares with this purchase.

We have been writing about Mr. Kinder's purchases for several weeks, and his purchases since he started buying actively in late January have totaled 4.3 million shares for a sum of $82 million. Following these purchases, he owns 251.27 million shares both directly and indirectly, representing nearly 11% of the company.

CEO & Chairman Phillip Frost M.D. acquired 90,000 shares of this devices and drug development company, paying $2.45 per share for a total amount of $220,594. These shares were purchased indirectly by Frost Nevada Investments Trust.

Chief Financial Officer Mary E. Meixelsperger acquired 7,500 shares of this engine and automotive maintenance products manufacturer, paying $18.71 per share for a total amount of $140,325. Ms. Meixelsperger increased her stake by 23.96% to 38,797 shares with this purchase.

Ms. Meixelsperger joined Valvoline as their CFO in June 2016 and made a small insider purchase in September of that year. This is her second insider purchase of the company, and this one was done under a 10b5-1 plan that was established on February 28, 2019. Considering she set up a 10b5-1 plan, it is likely that we will see additional insider purchases by her. The CEO of Valvoline also made a 25,000 share purchase in January of this year at an average price of $20.78 right before the company announced weak fiscal Q1 results and the stock dropped more than 20% to $18.10 in a single day.

P/E: 15.98

Forward P/E: 12.82

Industry P/E: 33.12

P/S: 1.54

Price/Book: N/A

EV/EBITDA: 11.14

Market Cap: $3.55B

Avg. Daily Volume: 1,442,927

52-week Range: $17.49-23.16

You can view the full list of purchases from this Insider Buying page.

Disclaimer: Please do your own due diligence before buying or selling any securities mentioned in this article. We do not warrant the completeness or accuracy of the content or data provided in this article.

Disclosure:I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it. I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.